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Bomb


"Dream is a magic carpet forever ready to be ridden to far-away worlds. My dream chases down the moments that escape me, willingly or unwillingly, in our hurry after the daily futile interests.

Dream is the magic stick that I ride to invade the virgin worlds haunting me without any need of visas or passports (…)
So, let us experience our beautiful dream and enjoy the journey to the Infinite"


It is all over, now. The faces that have dreamt for such a long time to change the world have disappeared. The period of detention that he has counted minute after minute and second after second is over now. The nights and days that he has spent in jail have eaten away his flesh and bones.

For two years in detention, he has been telling his cell about his dreams and his greatest projects that could not bear the painful strokes of time.

Soon after his release, he stopped before the giant jail gate to hear the sound of voices that would greet him outside. He heard no hullabaloo or acclamations or even slogans. There was a dead silence.

Partisans will bear you on their shoulders, tear out the white flags and will never again need to stealthily write their slogans on city walls. They will demolish those walls and crush them to powder under their feet.

But now everything has gone with the wind and everybody has got to rest.

In his life, there remains only his wife. She was the first to receive him: His faithful wife, the cradle of all his dreams, the keeper of all his private secrets, the fertile soil for all his children, the defender of their joint honour… His wife who, no sooner had she announced to him the happy news of her pregnancy than Earth shook under his feet and his eyes, vexed with all the world’s wretchedness, were drowned in her swollen bomb-like belly.

Pregnant? How ?

He repeated: « How ? »

He looked away. His wife looked him up and down, confessing that the two-years’ sleeping fetus has responded to the return call. Yes, the sleeping fetus, a phenomenon that no other woman has ever experienced!

The how’s raced through his mind, disturbed his thoughts, pounded in his brain. He bit his lower lip and faked a smile, and echoed her words:

«Yes, Love, fetuses can sleep in some of the womb’s angles or folds within their mothers’ bellies as long as they will. Yes, woman. Your belly, like an extinct volcano, can recover activity at any time you will it.».

His eyes held back a teardrop in an attempt remain as patient and brave as he had been in old days:
«It’s all the same, Rabbit. Whether present or absent, husbands are not necessary for their wives’ pregnancy».

The writer, Abdelouahid Kafih, is a Moroccan short story writer, born in 1961 in Fkih Ben Saleh, Morocco. He published in Arabic "Short Breaths" (Short Stories) 2006.

The translator, Mohamed Saïd Raihani, is a Moroccan translator, scholar & shortstory writer , born on December 23rd 1968 in Ksar El Kébir. He published in Arabic "The Will of Singularity" (A Semiotic Study on First-names) 2001, "Waiting For the Morning" (Short stories) 2003, "Thus Spoke Santa Lugar-Verde" (Short stories) 2005, "The Season Of Migration to Anywhere" (Short stories) 2006. he is getting ready for printing:"Beyond Writing & Reading " (testimonies) and "Kais & Juliette" (An E-Love Novel).

“Bomb" is the sixth narrative text in the "The Moroccan Dream", Anthology of Moroccan new short story directed by Mohamed Saïd Raihani.